The Government Media Office in Gaza holds US President Biden personally responsible for allowing the continuation of the Israeli occupation's massacres in the Strip. | The Israeli occupation committed a massacre in the Deir al-Balah area in the central Gaza Strip within the past 24 hours, despite claiming it to be a "safe zone". ● The Government Media Office in Gaza stated that 30 Palestinians were martyred in the massacre, highlighting that the Israeli occupation had called on Palestinians to seek refuge in Deir al-Balah before committing a horrifying massacre there. ● According to the Media Office, the Israeli occupation military targeted civilian homes with direct airstrikes and bombed a mosque in the same area, resulting in a significant number of martyrs.

■ Warning of ‘unparalleled killings’ as Israel targets Rafah safe zone in south Gaza (iNews)
■ 35,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza: Rights monitor (IRNA)
■ IOF launch mass incursion to boost troops preparedness in West Bank (Al Mayadeen)
■ Israel demolishes '58 Palestinian structures' in occupied West Bank in Jan. (TRT World)
■ Israel kills 2 children in kindergarten attack in southern Gaza (02/04/24)

The minister criticized the international community for "prioritizing Israel's security" over the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Palestine. | Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has raised concerns over biased treatment towards Israel in global discourse, accusing the country of pursuing territorial expansion rather than genuine security measures. Fidan condemned the Israeli bombardment that has led to civilian casualties and exacerbated the dire living conditions of more than 2 million people facing starvation and epidemics. 💬 "You do not allow aid to enter. You bomb the aid that enters outside your control. You are destroying the infrastructure where these people live. You are removing their access to water, electricity and communication," he said during a broadcast on private television A Haber on Feb. 4. "These people are hostages in your hands."

Groups attack Al-Omar oilfield in Deir ez-Zor province, where US forces are stationed | A US military base in Syria's Deir ez-Zor province came under drone attack from Iranian-backed groups, local sources said Monday. Iranian-backed groups stationed on the western bank of the Euphrates River attacked the Al-Omar oilfield, where US forces are stationed, with multiple kamikaze drones. No casualties have been reported. The US has not released a statement so far on the attacks.

■ Retaliation: America's largest base attacked - there are dead (b92)

Yemen’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has strongly condemned the latest wave of US and British airstrikes against the country, stressing that such attacks will not ever make the Yemeni nation and government backtrack on their pro-Palestinian stances. | The ministry in the Sana'a-based National Salvation Government deplored the most recent assaults on multiple targets in the strategic western province of Hudaydah as well as Sa’ada in the country’s northwest, stating that continuing US-British aggression clearly points to the UN Security Council’s failure to take on its responsibilities.

■ Turkish foreign minister warns of potential escalation in region (Anadolu)
■ US-UK aggression against Yemen ‘alarming threat’ to international peace, security: Tehran (PressTV)
■ US-British aggression targets Hodeidah, Saada governorates in Yemen (Al Mayadeen)
■ US, UK Conduct New Strikes on Yemen's Al Hudaydah, Saada Governorates - Local Officials (Sputnik News)
■ US plans additional strikes on Iranian-linked targets: White House (TRT World)
■ US Refuses to Rule Out Strikes Inside Iran (antiwar.com)

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is calling on global governments to censor individuals deemed to be “anti-vaxxers.” | Gates says he’s outraged that fewer people are taking his vaccines. According to Gates, the general masses are starting to refuse the experimental mRNA injections because of “misinformation about vaccines.” ● He insists that “anti-vaxxers” must be stripped of their free speech rights because they are “associating certain people, like myself or Fauci having malign intent, with vaccines.” ● Gates claims that citizens raising concerns and questions about the shots has led to a surge in “vaccination hesitancy.” He warns that the same concerns have also triggered a loss of trust in his various “public health” initiatives. Gates is now demanding government intervention because he claims the public won’t be “ready for the next pandemic” if they refuse to comply with the mass vaccination agenda.

■ Bill Gates’ Conversation With His Daughter Clotilda (Walter Gelles)
■ The covid booster cancer time bomb (Professor Angus Dalgleish)

■ APPLICATION OF THE CONVENTION ON THE PREVENTION AND PUNISHMENT OF THE CRIME OF GENOCIDE IN THE GAZA STRIP (ORDER OF 26 JANUARY 2024) (.pdf) + APPLICATION INSTITUTING PROCEEDINGS (.pdf)
■ THE EXPRESSION OF HATRED FOR GENTILES (Richard Edmondson/Nahida Izzat) (10/04/14)

Two children have been killed overnight in an Israeli attack on a kindergarten in Rafah in southern Gaza, where displaced people were sheltering, the health ministry says. | Palestine’s official WAFA news agency, citing medical and local sources, reported that the two little girls were killed in the kindergarten attack at dawn on Sunday in the east of Rafah and dozens of others were injured. “The children were just sleeping and suddenly the bombardment happened. One of my children died while three managed to escape,” resident Ahmad Bassam al-Jamal was quoted as saying by AFP. According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, at least 92 Palestinians were killed overnight by Israeli attacks. ● Aljazeera correspondent, Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Rafah said last night was “another sleepless night” for 1.9 million displaced Palestinians in Rafah as the Israeli military intensified its bombing across the city, including residential buildings as well as public facilities.

■ Israel occupation forces intensify Rafah attacks (Middle East Monitor)
■ Live blog: Palestinian death toll reaches 27,365 amid Israeli bombardment (TRT World)
■ 127 Palestinians killed in Gaza in last 24 hours, death toll climbs to 27,365 (Anadolu)
■ Israeli strikes against Gaza ‘ugliest form of terrorism’: Libyan prime minister (Anadolu)

This comes after the US initiated a series of strikes overnight, targeting positions in Iraq and Syria. | Russian Deputy Envoy to the UN Dmitry Polyanskiy on Saturday announced that Russia has sought an immediate session of the UN Security Council (UNSC) on February 5 in response to the US' aggression on Iraq and Syria. ● "Russia has just called for an urgent UN Security Council meeting to discuss threats to international peace and security from the US strikes against Iraq and Syria. The meeting is expected to be held at 4 pm EST [21:00 GMT] on February 5," Polyanskiy said on X. ● This comes after the US initiated a series of strikes overnight, targeting entities that the US Central Command (CENTCOM) alleges to be affiliated with the IRGC and its allies. According to CENTCOM, US forces struck more than 85 targets in Iraq and Syria with numerous aircraft, including long-range bombers that were said to have taken off from the US.

■ Warnings of "exploding the situation" in the region after the US strikes in Syria and Iraq (Al Jazeera)
■ US strikes in Middle East a ‘strategic mistake’ – Iran (RT.com)
■ US hits 85 targets in Syria and Iraq (02/03/24)

The United States and Britain launched strikes against 36 Houthi targets in Yemen on Saturday, in the second day of major U.S. operations against Iran-linked groups following a deadly attack on American troops last weekend. | The strikes hit buried weapons storage facilities, missile systems, launchers and other capabilities the Houthis have used to attack Red Sea shipping, the Pentagon said, adding it targeted 13 locations across the country. It was the latest sign of spreading conflict in the Middle East since war erupted between Israel and Hamas after the militant Palestinian group's deadly assault on Israel on Oct.7.

■ US Strikes in Iraq and Syria Kill About 40, Including Civilians (February 3, 2024)(antiwar.com)
■ US-UK aggression on Yemen will not go unanswered: Saree (Al Mayadeen)
■ US and UK bomb 36 targets in Yemen (RT.com)

The Islamic Resistance, an umbrella group of Iraqi anti-terror groups, announces carrying out a raft of strikes against American targets in the Arab country and neighboring Syria in response to a flurry of US aerial assaults. | In a statement released in early Saturday, the resistance said it had conducted missile strikes against the Ain al-Assad Airbase housing US occupation forces in the western Iraqi al-Anbar Province. ● The group also said it had staged missile and drone strikes against the strategic al-Tanf military base in southeastern Syria near the border with Jordan and Iraq as well as the al-Khadra Village in Syria's northeastern province of al-Hasakah. ● Earlier, Reuters news agency cited three American officials as saying that the United States had carried out aerial attacks against 85 targets inside the Arab countries. ● The US staged the so-called "retaliatory" assaults against those whom it alleged were responsible for a deadly attack against American forces in Jordan on Sunday.

■ 8 rockets reportedly hit US base in eastern Syria (Mehr News)
■ Explosions rock US base in Syria's Koniko Gas Field (Shafaq News)
■ Iraqi parliament calling to ditch US dollar for oil trade (The Cradle)(FEB 1, 2024)

The Ukraine Army used an American-supplied HIMARS precision rocket system, to attack a Bakery/Restaurant in the ex-Ukraine city of Lysychansk, Luhansk, Russia today. The strike killed at least twenty (20) people and destroyed the building. | TERRIFYING SCENES of dusted and bloodied bodies on stretchers could be seen as the dead and injured victims were pulled from rubble. Lysychansk is a city of about 99,000 people and is some 15 kilometers (nine miles) from Ukrainian-controlled territory. It is not a military center and has no military troops or bases there. It is clear Ukraine hit this city because they wanted to kill CIVILIANS. The scalable map below shows the location of Lysychansk. ● Video of a heavily damaged building, with emergency workers pulling out an entirely crushed car, is already making its way across global social media sites has people asking why the Ukraine Army would hit a bakery? The answer: The bakery was known to have fresh bread on weekends. ● The Luhansk Information Center said Ukraine shelled the bakery using the US-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS). Lysychansk voted in a supervised and internationally-observed Public Referendum, to secede from Ukraine and to join Russia. Ukraine would not let them go.

■ Death toll from Ukraine’s strike on Lisichansk up to 28 (TASS)

Dmitry Medvedev (Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council) (Дмитрий Медведев) | As you know, the Western world has long been patronizing and financially supporting our so-called non-systemic opposition in every possible way. For example, the bastard extremist Navalny and his comrades. And the whole colorful coterie of glamorous oppositionists, who have scattered over the past decades like plague rats to Western countries and shit on any occasion. Among them are outright freaks, like the schizoid ex-chess player Kasparov, who belongs in a psychiatric clinic. And Khodorkovsky's gang, which has matured over the years of criminal activity, consisting of born thieves and murderers, organizes meetings of oppositionists of all stripes for the money stolen in Russia. And a new, very young generation of various freaks, who put on the uniforms of Khokhlonazis to organize terrorist attacks and sabotage in Russia. And their intellectual servants from among the scoundrels from literature, for whom the ice axe of the new Ramon Mercader is crying. ■ Why did I bring up our "non-systemists" for all their disgusting squalor? Here's why. There is a non-systemic opposition in the West as well. True, it is not wretched and venal, but much more reasonable and decent. It does not wish for the death of its Fatherland, like the fugitive Russian detractors, but sees a new way of developing. It is different: both left and right. Each with its own national program that opposes American globalism. It exists in every EU country and even across the ocean. There is already such opposition in national parliaments and in the European Parliament, where elections will be held soon. ■ Undoubtedly, the new politicians are much more adequate and motivated than the fat cats from traditional Western parties. This, still irregular, opposition today clearly sees all the vices of the current liberal globalism and the Pindostanocentric world order. And our task is to support such politicians and their parties in the West in every possible way, helping them apertum et secretum to achieve decent results in the elections. Some of them will turn from non-systemic oppositionists into a new part of the political establishment. And their accession to state governance can radically improve the political landscape in the Western world. This is why they are so feared by the cunning intellectual castrati leading the old political forces in Europe and across the ocean, as well as by the sexless, rainbow-haired sleuths who are now at the helm of many Western countries. And not without reason. Lao Tzu said that "the flexible and weak overpower the hard and strong". (DeepL + LanguageTool)

US Central Command announced on Friday that that it had hit 85 Kata'ib Hezbollah targets in Syria and Iraq in retaliation for a recent drone attack on a U.S. military headquarters in Jordan near the border with Syria that killed three US service members. | The attacks were conducted last night. Officials in Iraq have condemned the attacks. Reportedly, the overnight air strikes on Syria killed at least 18 fighters. ● Kataib Hezbollah had said the attacks on the American headquarters in the region, including the recent one in Jordan, were in response to Washington’s full support for Israel’s massacre of the Palestinians in Gaza, which started in October 2023. Kataib Hezbollah, also called the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, have so far fired missiles at Israel's for its genocidal war in the besieged Gaza Strip. US military officials have not provided an estimated death toll but have said the strikes resulted in causalities.

■ Lloyd Austin: ‘We Don’t Know’ If Iran Was Involved in Jordan Drone Attack (antiwar.com)
■ Damascus says US occupation of Syrian territory ‘cannot continue’ (Malay Mail)
■ Military statement: A number of civilian and military martyrs in U.S. new aggression near borders with Iraq (SANA)
■ Iraq condemns US airstrikes as ‘breach of sovereignty', warns of 'disasterous consequences' (PressTV)
■ Most targeted sites completely evacuated before aggression (Al Mayadeen)
■ Yemen's Ansarullah vows to stand by Iraqi, Syrian resistance groups 'in battlefield' after US strikes (PressTV)
■ Iraq’s Nujaba: We’ll Keep up Ops against US until Occupation Ends, Gaza Genocide Stops (Alahed News)

Eran Elhaik | Did Ashkenazi Jews descend from ancient Turkey? | At 1,000 years, the search for the location of Ashkenaz – thought to be the birthplace of Ashkanazic Jews and the Yiddish language – is one of the longest quests in human history. It is perhaps second only in length to the search for Noah’s Ark which began in the 3rd century AD. ● The place name Ashkenaz occurs three times in the Bible, but by the Middle Ages the exact origin of Ashkenaz was forgotten. Because of the migration of the Ashkenazic Jews it later became associated with Germany. This led to all German Jews being considered “Ashkenazic”, a term which was then applied to central and eastern European Jews who follow Ashkenazic religious customs and who speak Yiddish. ● The Yiddish language – which consists of Hebrew, German, Slavic elements and is written in Aramaic – has been spoken at least since the 9th century AD, but its origins have been debated by linguists for several centuries. While some have suggested a German origin, others believe a more complex beginning for the language, starting in Slavic lands in Khazaria – the Middle Age Khazar Empire that covered present-day southern Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and parts of the Caucasus – and followed by Ukraine, and finally Germany. Although the language adopted a German vocabulary it retained its Slavic grammar – which is why Yiddish is often referred to as “bad German”. ● The inability of linguists to reach a consensus have led some to decry that the mystery of where Yiddish came from will never be solved. But now for the first time a pioneering tool that converts genome data into ancestral coordinates, is helping to pinpoint the DNA of Yiddish speakers. ● In the largest genomic study of Ashkenazic Jews, and the first one to study Yiddish speakers, we applied our Geographic Population Structure (GPS) tool – which operates in a similar way to the sat nav in your car – to the genomes of more than 360 Yiddish and non-Yiddish speaking Ashkenazic Jews. ● Surprisingly, our GPS homed in on north-east Turkey, where we found four primeval villages, one of which was abandoned in the mid-7th century AD. ● These ancient villages identified by the GPS tool are clustered close to the Silk Road – the ancient network of trade routes – and are named Iskenaz, Eskenaz, Ashanaz, and Ashkuz. And it is likely that these are the villages that mark the location of the lost lands of Ashkenaz.

■ New Genome Study Destroys Zionist Claims to Palestine (03/04/13)
■ Jews Are Not a Race But Jewish Identity is Racist (10/14/13)

Mosab Shawer | Ahed Emtair was shot by Israeli forces during a raid near Hebron in the occupied West Bank. | Bahaa Masalmeh was planning to shower his young wife with gifts on her upcoming 21st birthday, which he had been planning for several weeks. ● But on January 15, Ahed, a mother of a six-month-old baby daughter, was shot and killed by Israeli forces during a raid into the town of Dura near Hebron in the southern West Bank. She was inside her brother-in-law’s house at the time, watching for her husband’s arrival at a window. ● The couple had only been married for 15 months, but Masalmeh said his wife had left him with his best memories and that she had given him the “best days” of his life. Ahed was a keen learner, loved by “everyone”, he said – her cheerful soul and thirst for life were contagious. “She was the love of my life,” he told Al Jazeera. “She was the epitome of everything good in life.” Now, he has been left to raise their daughter, Ayloul, without her.

Raja Abdulrahim | A U.N. office said Israel’s detention and treatment of detainees might amount to torture. It estimated thousands had been detained and held in “horrific” conditions. Some were freed wearing only diapers. | Cold, almost naked and surrounded by Israeli soldiers with M16 assault rifles, Ayman Lubbad knelt among dozens of Palestinian men and boys who had just been forced from their homes in northern Gaza. ● It was early December and photographs and videos taken at the time showed him and other detainees in the street, wearing only underwear and lined up in rows, surrounded by Israeli forces. ● In one video, a soldier yelled at them over a megaphone: “We’re occupying all of Gaza. Is that what you wanted? You want Hamas with you? Don’t tell me you’re not Hamas.” The detainees, some barefoot with their hands on their heads, shouted objections. “I’m a day laborer,” one man shouted. “Shut up,” the soldier yelled back. ● Palestinian detainees from Gaza have been stripped, beaten, interrogated and held incommunicado over the past three months, according to accounts by nearly a dozen of the detainees or their relatives interviewed by The New York Times. Organizations representing Palestinian prisoners and detainees gave similar accounts in a report, accusing Israel of both indiscriminate detention of civilians and demeaning treatment of detainees.

■ Field executions: Bodies of 30 Palestinians found in bags at Beit Lahia school (01/31/24)

■ Outrage over ‘What Gaza could be like’ propaganda video [Puke Video]

SOHR activists have reported hearing loud explosions in the US base in Al-Omar oil field in the eastern countryside of Deir Ezzor, the US largest base in Syria. However, it is not known if the explosions were caused by an attack on the base. The explosions coincided with flights by drones over the region.

■ US base in eastern Syria attacked by drones (TASS)
■ US military base in eastern Syria targeted with drones (Mehr News)

The US blamed an Iranian-backed militia group for recent attacks. | The strikes will take place over a number of days, officials said, and weather conditions will likely dictate when they are launched. Iran, meanwhile, has denied any role in the attack which injured 41 other US troops at the military base, known as Tower 22. It comes after a drone attack killed three US soldiers in Jordan, close to the Syrian border, on Sunday.

■ Iran vows strong response to aggression, Raisi says (Amu TV)
■ Iraq’s pro-Iran Al-Nujaba movement vows to keep up attacks on US troops (Malay Mail)
■ US "believes" Iranian-made drone behind deadly attack – Reuters
■ US approves strikes on Iranian personnel and facilities in Iraq, Syria (Al Mayadeen) (RT.com)

The Yemeni army has carried out yet another attack in the Red Sea, this time targeting a British vessel amid tensions over the UK-US joint aggression against the Arab country to protect Israeli maritime interests in the region. | A Yemeni military source has been quoted by Al Jazeera that the British vessel was en route to an Israeli port in the occupied Palestinian territories when it was hit by Yemeni missiles on Thursday night. ● The spokesman for Yemen’s Armed Forces, Brigadier General Yahya Saree has confirmed the attack, noting that the strike on the vessel was part of the country’s support for the Palestinian people in Gaza who have been under unprecedented bloody aggression by the Zionist regime nearly the four months. ● Yemen says it will keep targeting any Zionist or Zionist-linked vessels in the Red Sea as long as the war in Gaza continues and the besieged territory remains under the blockade. ● The Yemeni army has conducted over two dozen attacks on Israeli-linked commercial vessels in the Ted and Arab Seas since mid-November.

■ Yemen strikes British merchant ship in solidarity with Gazans (Tehran Times)

Kiev used two foreign-made missiles to destroy the Il-76 last week, authorities have said | A Russian cargo plane carrying dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) for exchange was downed last week by a US-made Patriot air defense system, the country’s Investigative Committee has confirmed. ● In a statement on Thursday, the agency said that it had identified the type of weapon used to shoot down the Il-76 last Wednesday over Belgorod Region. There were 65 Ukrainian POWs, three Russian troops, and six crew members on board, all of whom died in the crash. ● The Investigative Committee said that Ukraine fired two missiles from a staging area in Kharkov Region, not far from the village of Liptsy, some 10km from the Russian border. Officials said that during the investigation they found 116 missile fragments bearing inscriptions in English, with one of them reading: “CONFIDENTIAL classified by PATRIOT SECURITY CLASSIFICATION GUIDE DATED: 9/22/83 ADDENDA DATED 11/28/83 8/8/84 CONTRACT NO/DAAH01-86C-A018.”

Tarik Cyril Amar | Steadfast Defender 2024, the bloc’s largest exercise in decades, is not only about military cohesion – it’s about selling war to the people | NATO has launched its largest exercise since the Cold War ended. Steadfast Defender 2024 will last several months and involve about 90,000 troops, over 50 naval vessels, 1,100 ground vehicles (including at least 133 tanks and 533 armored troop carriers), and 80 aircraft of various kinds (planes, helicopters, and drones). ● All 31 alliance members will participate, as will Sweden, which is in the process of joining. However, it’s not only a matter of numbers and duration. The massive event is also special for two more reasons, one fairly straightforward, the other more complicated and worthy of serious scrutiny. ● The more complicated issue is that the exercise was preceded by a veritable onslaught of propaganda - or in up-to-date NATO-speak, cognitive warfare. One dead give-away that this has been deliberate is that the Western think tank/information-war platform the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) is already accusing Russia of engaging in “an information operation to misrepresent” the purely “defensive” Steadfast Defender.

■ APPLICATION OF THE CONVENTION ON THE PREVENTION AND PUNISHMENT OF THE CRIME OF GENOCIDE IN THE GAZA STRIP (ORDER OF 26 JANUARY 2024) (.pdf) + APPLICATION INSTITUTING PROCEEDINGS (.pdf)
■ THE EXPRESSION OF HATRED FOR GENTILES (Richard Edmondson/Nahida Izzat) (10/04/14)

Israeli shelling has again targeted the Nasser Hospital, which has been besieged for days, Al Mayadeen's correspondent reported. | On the 118th day of Israeli aggression on Gaza, numerous Palestinians were killed and several others sustained injuries. Local Palestinian media outlets reported that the western region of Gaza City, including the Remal neighborhood and Tal al-Hawa, witnessed Israeli invading forces launching missiles, gunfire, and shelling, resulting in casualties. Concurrently, ambulances faced challenges reaching the affected areas to transport the injured to al-Shifa Hospital. In addition, casualties occurred when Israeli warplanes targeted two houses in al-Zeitoun neighborhood.

■ Israeli invading forces burning Gaza homes to make Strip uninhabitable (Al Mayadeen)
■ Thousands of displaced Gazans lack food, water in Khan Younis, Health Ministry warns (aNews)
■ “Israel” Likely Dropped 1,000-pound Bomb on UK Doctors in Gaza (Alahed News)
■ UN: Israeli war renders Gaza ‘uninhabitable;’ restoration will take ‘decades’ (PressTV)

■ Hossein Askari | Only criminally insane minds can cause so much panic in Gaza | Israeli rulers, even those considered rather moderate, have been seeking a plan to depopulate Palestinians from their motherland. Probably the October 7 attack by Hamas on southern Israel provided the ill-wishers in Israel with an excuse to go ahead with the plan more speedily and more cruelly. ● Punishing an entire 2.3 million people in the Gaza Strip for the October 7 attack has no justification. Only mad persons and those who formulate vicious plots in their minds can cause so much tragedy for hundreds of thousands of people.

■ Gaza war lays bare the immorality of the Western world (Tehran Times Editorial) The Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, claimed that the Hamas attack of October 7 did not happen in a vacuum. If not in a vacuum, what was in that space? ● Israel’s 80 years of Zionist cruelty began with the confiscation of land and other property and expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians with no compensation who were also prohibited from ever returning to their homes; a settler rule that is aptly characterized by inhumanity, random incarceration, torture and murder; with Gaza the largest prison in the world, holding 2.3 million Palestinians, isolated from the rest of the world; and administered by Israel, an apartheid state with three sets of laws—one for Israeli Jews, another for Israeli Arabs and yet another for non-Israeli Palestinians. The perfect definition of apartheid and arguably worse than what we witnessed in South Africa as claimed by the late Archbishop Tutu.

Moscow’s forces must ensure Kiev’s troops cannot strike Russian cities with Western longer-range weapons, the president has said | Russia needs to create a large “demilitarized zone” in Ukraine, one that is big enough to ensure no longe-range weapons can strike Russian cities, President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday. ● Russian border regions have been subjected to frequent drone and missile attacks, as well as shelling by the Ukrainian military, since the start of the conflict between Kiev and Moscow. One of the deadliest attacks took place on December 30, when Kiev’s forces struck the Russian border city of Belgorod with multiple rocket launchers, including the RM-70 Vampire – an upgraded heavier version of the Soviet BM-21 Grad system. ● A strike in December claimed the lives of 25 people, including children, and left more than 100 injured. In January, another massive strike hit the city of Donetsk, killing 27 civilians. Both attacks were condemned by the UN.

■ US pushing Ukraine to new atrocities – Moscow (RT.com)
■ Chinese defense chief promises support to Russia on ‘Ukrainian issue’ (RT.com)

Ukraine on Thursday claimed that its forces sunk a Russian missile ship belonging to Moscow's Black Sea fleet. | A statement by Ukraine's Defense Intelligence (HUR) said that the Tarantul-class corvette called Ivanovets was sunk by special HUR units overnight. "The operation was made possible with the support of the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine and the United24 platform," the statement added. It said the corvette was patrolling the Black Sea near Lake Donuzlav near the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014, when a series of direct hits to the ship's hull caused damage, resulting in it sinking.

■ Ukraine claims drones sank Russian ship in Black Sea (Irish Examiner)
■ EU leaders agree on additional €50B support package for Ukraine (Anadolu)

The United States and Britain have conducted new strikes on Yemen as the Arab country continues its maritime campaign in support of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip amid an Israeli genocide. | Yemen’s al-Masirah television network reported that the air raids targeted Yemen’s western provinces of Sa’ada and Hudaydah on Wednesday evening and Thursday at dawn, respectively. Meanwhile, local sources said the American warplanes that bombed Yemen had flown from a US military base in Bahrain. In a statement, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) claimed that its aerial assaults had hit an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) ground control station and 10 one-way drones in Yemen. It also alleged that the targets “presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels and the US Navy ships in the region.”

■ New US, British Aggression on Yemen (Alahed News)
■ Yemeni forces target US Navy destroyer in Red Sea with missiles: Army spokesman (PressTV)
■ Red Sea crisis exposing EU energy weakness – FT (RT.com)

President Vladimir Putin announced Wednesday that Russian investigators had determined that Ukraine used a US-made Patriot missile system to bring down an Ilyushin Il-76 transport plane full of Ukrainian prisoners of war on January 24. | The Russian Investigative Committee has identified missile fragments found near the Il-76 crash site in Belgorod region. 💬 "Based on the conclusion of examinations carried out during the investigation, the fragments seized from the scene of the incident, based on their design features, geometric characteristics and available markings, are structural elements of the MIM-104A anti-aircraft guided missile of the US Patriot complex, developed by the Raytheon and Hughes corporations, and produced by Raytheon," the Investigative Committee said in a summary of findings released Thursday.

■ All victims of Ukrainian POW plane crash identified – investigators (RT.com)
■ Russia's investigative committee says Il-76 plane crash result of missiles fired by Patriot system (Anadolu)
■ Russian lawmakers to call on US Congress to hold those behind Il-76 downing responsible (TASS)
■ Putin: Ukraine Downed Russian Il-76 Full of Ukrainian PoWs Using US-Made Patriot Missile System (01/31/24)
■ Black box data confirms external impact on Il-76 near Belgorod — source (01/30/24)

Israeli soldier Chai Hamo said the Israeli army is not yet a moral army, as to be moral is to kill all Palestinians after interrogating them and to ‘flatten and conquer all parts of Israel’. In the video he recorded and posted to his Facebook account, he said the Israeli army killed ‘tens of thousands of Amalek’ and destroyed the vast majority of Gaza. ■ Instagram Video